Saturday, November 22, 2008

Spam Warehouse plans kicked into touch?

Interesting news in the Telegraph this morning. It appears that the Government's plan to have a large spam warehouse which will record the details of each mail we send and receive may never make it to the statute book by the time of the next election because of basic Parliamentary time constraints.

Of course, that doesn't mean it is being shelved but I would bet that it being kicked into the long grass simply because of the inevitable cost it would have and the fact that the Government has never delivered an IT project on time or on budget, thus committing to it and forcing it through may be a bit risky.

Having said this of course, the spam warehouse would only be monitoring the average bod. You're average techie, hyper-criminal and terrorist will instead be encrypting all their mail with a 256 bit DSA key pair and sending and receiving across an IPSEC tunnel which goes via a server outside the scope and reach of the proposed system and using non-standard TCP ports for extra measure.

Perhaps someone has had a persuasive word in the ear of the Home Secretary and pointed out to her that her little scheme will just end up being a giant and completely unsearchable dump for porn traffic statistics and 419 scam source addresses an recipients?

5 comments:

Someone may have had a word in the ear of the Home Secretary (and I'm not very comfortable with that image), but do you suppose that a) she actually understood what was said and, b) would change what passes for her 'mind'?

At the foot of the article is "The Bill is one of several that are said to have fallen victim to a cut in the scope of the Queen's Speech to ensure that ministers stay focused on the oncoming recession."

Or could it be that they are to remain focussed on the oncoming General Election?

"Perhaps someone has had a persuasive word in the ear of the Home Secretary"

Perhaps Dizzy, but I would guess the Tits would have ignored that advice. I think the reason for kicking this into the long grass is that with an election in the offing, it would do them no good to have another humiliating defeat in the Commons or the Lords.

"her little scheme will just end up being a giant and completely unsearchable dump for ....... 419 scam source addresses" Well, let's look on the bright side; those internet offers of a cut of some dead bloke's huge fortune could be the answer to the whole fiscal problem. One can see why the Badger might not want this to go away - he's going to be desperate for cash before too long and those Nigerian offers may actually prove to be more substantive than some of the funding plans he's dreaming up, so best to keep them "on file" for future referral. And those sensible chaps don't even ask you for proof of identity either - another bonus.